Wise Readers, Last week, I asked you: Do you want to be asked before someone kisses you in a new relationship? How about an established relationship? What if the questions referred to your own teenage child?
Why the heck would I want to know?!
Because surprisingly, there’s not much scientific enquiry about kissing. Just a lot of assumptions. And your Survey responses, plus other relationship research, helps take what we know about Kissing—our own, our kids’—to the next level.

Wise Readers,
Your resounding response to the Passionate Kisses column? No!—It’s not too much to ask! Indeed, many of you insist on them. Beyond that, you had questions: Why is the husband’s (but not wife’s) memory for courtship such an important predictor of whether a marriage will last? Is it shallow to insist on passionate kisses from the very start of a relationship? What do scientists really know about kissing? Is there a distinction between emotional and physical passion—and can either one last forever?
Read on!

Dear Duana,
Meg and I have been married 17 years, but we’ve never had a spark when we’ve kissed—even from day one. There’s a lack of intimacy in it for me that’s troubling as I reach this middle period of my life and marriage. So my questions are, does the lack of passion in our kissing mean anything? Or should it be enough to have values and interests in common?
Bart